Place Vocabulary Research Project, A Report to the Commission on Education of the International Geographic Union.

Saveland, Robert N., Ed.

The objective of this study was to find out with what major geographic place names, various 13-year-old children from different countries were familiar. Anglo-American, Latin American, Western European, African, Asian, and Arab cultures were represented among the countries participating in the project. A sampling of students (usually at least 300) from each country were given a map of the world and asked to identify oceans, countries, and cities. A teacher questionnaire asked teachers to characterize their communities and to describe their schools. The publication contains country reports (an overview of the school system and analysis of data) from: Canada, United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Soviet Union, Eqypt, Nigeria, India, Japan, New Zealand, and Iraq. The country reports demonstrate that there is a wide range of pupil performance not only among countries, but also within a country. The highest level of achievement was reported by Poland. The scores from Ireland and the Netherlands closely approximate one another. Canada and the United States have patterns like those of Western Europe but at somewhat lower levels of performance. Countries referred to as "developing nations" turned in the largest proportion of students in the low range of scores. That the scores of Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela should be so similar lends a certain credence to the test results. (RM)